Defenseless Under the Night : The Roosevelt Years, Civil Defense, and the Origins of Homeland Security - Matthew Dallek

Defenseless Under the Night

The Roosevelt Years, Civil Defense, and the Origins of Homeland Security

By: Matthew Dallek

Hardcover | 16 August 2016

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As the bombs fell on Guernica, the Blitz terrorized Britons, and atrocities were reported from Nanking-even before Pearl Harbor--Americans watched and worried about attacks on their homeland. In 1941, US mayors urged President Franklin D. Roosevelt to form a federal agency to focus on mobilization and citizen protection. In May of that year, FDR established an Office of Civilian Defense to protect Americans from foreign and domestic threats. As its head, he appointed New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, elected leader of America's most vulnerable city. As the assistant director, he appointed First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt

In this book, Matthew Dallek, historian, journalist, and speechwriter, narrates the history of the Office of Civilian Defense. He uses the development of the precursor of "homeland security" as a way of examining constitutional questions about civil liberties; the role of government in propagandizing to its own citizens; competing visions among liberals and conservatives for establishing a plan to defend America; and federal, state, and local responsibilities for citizen protection. Much of the dramatic tension lies in the preparation of communities against attack and their fears of Japanese invasion along the Pacific Coast and Nazi invasion. So too there was a clash of visions between LaGuardia and Eleanor Roosevelt. The mayor argued that the OCD's focus had to be on preparing the country against German and Japanese attack, including conducting blackout drills, preparing evacuation plans, coordinating emergency medical teams, and protecting industrial plants and transportation centers. The First Lady believed the OCD should also promote social justice for African Americans and women and raise civilian morale through the building of nursery schools, old-age homes, housing projects, and physical fitness centers. Their clashes frustrated FDR, who pressured them both to resign in 1942, and led to the appointment of James Landis, commissioner of the SEC, who created a semi-military operation that involved grassroots citizen mobilization, including dimming house-lights to prevent German subs from spotting American ships on the Atlantic, planting Victory Gardens, and building the Civil Air Patrol. Over twelve million volunteers joined civil defense under his leadership, making it the largest volunteer program in World War II America.

This dramatic story of the wartime homefront will interest readers attracted to New Deal and wartime domestic history, those who read about both Roosevelts and Fiorello LaGuardia, and those interested in the history of civil defense and Homeland Security.
Industry Reviews
"Dallek's book is a good reminder of how far the impact of war reaches beyond the population of men and women in uniform."--Robert Earnest Miller, The Journal of American History "Dallek provides us with a haunting account, one highly relevant to the anxiety-ridden nation of today."--H-Diplo "Following sudden and unexpected assaults [on the United States], presidents of all ideological stripes typically call on the public not to be afraid. The tradition, as historian Matthew Dallek shows in a fascinating new book, 'Defenseless Under The Night: The Roosevelt Years and the Origins of Homeland Security,' goes back to the fear Americans felt in the 1930s."--Newsday "The fascinating story of the rise and fall of the Office of Civilian Defense (OCD), America's first federal office of homeland security. FDR created the OCD less than six months before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Drawing from a broad range of primary and secondary sources, Dallek, Assistant Professor of Political Management at George Washington University, focuses his attention on the personalities at the top of the OCD as well as the politics surrounding its creation and development."--Jourden Travis Moger, Naval Historical Foundation "This is a great book. Rarely do readers get to experience the unique combination of fascinating history, contemporary relevance, drama, and intrigue in wonk-policy detail in a single, enjoyable work Dallek (GWU) takes readers through all of the touch points, which actually read like modern headlines in The New York Times: government propaganda, militarized civilian life, competing political visions for national defense, and the evolution of national security into the public consciousness."--Choice "Immensely readable `Defenseless' is a meticulous account of an epic battle that set Roosevelt, the first lady, against La Guardia, the mayor of New York, as the two created the country's first Office of Civilian Defense (OCD), the precursor to what we know today as the Department of Homeland Security They ignited an important conversation about liberalism and its role in times of crisis."--Washington Post "Matthew Dallek's powerful history of America's wartime needs from civil defense to homeland security is urgently needed now. Deeply researched, vividly written, this splendid book highlights Eleanor Roosevelt's prescient l940 effort to launch a movement for civil defense, citizen empowerment, human rights-and the widespread opposition to those goals - which reflect our ongoing political divisions." --Blanche Wiesen Cook, author of Eleanor Roosevelt "Ever since 9/11, Americans have yearned for a return to an idyllic earlier time when no one in this country had to fear a rain of death from the sky. But in this fascinating book, Matthew Dallek reveals vividly that anxiety about terror from abroad began as early as 1938. He also gives readers a fresh appreciation of Eleanor Roosevelt, who viewed civil defense as an opportunity for social advance - an emphasis that has been discarded in today's concern with 'homeland security.'" --William E. Leuchtenburg, author of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932-1940 "Matthew Dallek's book represents political history at its very best. Informed by meticulous research, written in vivid prose, and full of shrewd insight, Defenseless Under the Night shows how the Roosevelt administration struggled to maintain the proper balance between protecting individual rights and ensuring the nation's security. It is an issue that is as relevant today as it was in the 1930s and 1940s." --Steven Gillon, author of Pearl Harbor: FDR Leads the Nation into War "An engaging and thoughtful portrait of the United States on the cusp of World War II. Dallek's book offers a gripping account of the little-studied civil defense program and its influence on American society. The conflicts among Dallek's rich main characters, including Eleanor Roosevelt and Fiorello LaGuardia, show that World War II was not just a fight against fascism abroad; it was also a struggle over the future of liberalism at home."--Beverly Gage, author of The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in Its First Age of Terror

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